Kids and pets have a lot of things in common. For one, they both start as tiny beings that you want to shower with all your love and affection. Plus, they can be such angels when they’re asleep in their little beds. But they can also be such a headache once they learn how to grab or bite things and move around on their own.
That’s why doing household maintenance when you have both kids and pets in the house can be exhausting. You love them, but their combined energies and ability to make a mess of everything can overpower anyone. Oftentimes, it can make you feel like it’s you against them and the whole world.
Fortunately, there are plenty of cleaning and maintenance hacks that you can rely on. The tips and tricks of household maintenance may appear difficult to do at first, but once you find the right jive, keeping your house clean will be a piece of cake. Here are the four cleaning tips that you can follow:
1. Invest in a Strong Vacuum Cleaner
One of the biggest challenges of being a fur parent is that dog fur gets everywhere, especially if you allow your pets to climb on your sofa or bed. This becomes even worse if you have yourself a shedder because that’s double the amount of dog fur that you’ll have to clean out of your furniture.
That’s why you need a high-quality and strong vacuum cleaner to get rid of all the fallen dog fur, dander, and dust that have gathered in your house. Your vacuum needs to have extra strong suction so that you can collect all the stray hairs and make sure that your house stays as dog-fur-free as possible.
2. Regularly Groom Your Dogs
As a fur parent, you should already know that grooming is important to pet care. Granted, your dogs might not need to bathe as often as humans do, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep them clean. Even if you’re not shampooing your dogs every day, there’s nothing wrong with washing their paws after a walk outside.
You should also take them to a professional dog groomer for a regular trim or a de-shedding. Doing so will also allow you to see if your dogs are being pestered by ticks, which can attach themselves to the skin for a few days to a few weeks. If they are, you should consider having your yard checked for an infestation.
This is because ticks can cause diseases both in humans and animals. If your dogs are experiencing tick bites, it wouldn’t be surprising if you and your kids are too. So, before the situation becomes even worse, you need to call professionals in tick treatment services to take care of your infestation problem.
3. Ventilate the House Often
Just like people, pets can give off different odors. And while it’s not distracting most of the time, there can be cases where the smells are too persistent or uncomfortable to ignore. Luckily, you can solve this problem by cracking your windows open and allowing the air to circulate throughout the house.
Ventilation is important to maintaining indoor air quality. Many airborne contaminants may be invisible to the naked eye, and your HVAC system won’t always be able to filter them out. That’s why you need to make sure that you air your house often because fresh air is always welcome.
4. In Case of Accidents, Act Fast
With both kids and pets in the house, there’s no telling what will happen next. But you can always expect your kids, your dogs, or all of them to cause an accident in one way or another. That’s why you have to stay alert and keep emergency cleaning supplies at the ready, so you can be prepared for whatever may come your way.
Unpleasant smells, tough stains, and overall disasters. These are just some situations that you may find yourself in sooner rather than later. So make use of all the cleaning hacks under your sleeve. For instance, you can use foam shaving cream to get rid of tough stains, or a water-vinegar-dish soap solution as your go-to cleaning solution for all things pet-related.
There’s nothing wrong with admitting that you need all the help you can get. Maintaining an entire house on your own is already a full-time job, but to add raising kids and taking care of pets to the mix will be enough to physically drain anyone. So, don’t forget that in the midst of taking care of everything and everyone, you need to take care of yourself too.
